Skip to main content

UM Admin Maliciously Forces CEC to Delay Campus Election


The University of Malaya (UM) Campus Election is a major democratic event of UM where all undergraduate students have the right to vote for the new leadership board of the University of Malaya of Students’ Union (UMSU). Every year, the Campus Election Committee (CEC) is the party which is responsible for organising the UM Campus Election, with its committee and members consisting of UM students. At the end of 2018, the first CEC board was formed upon the first reformation of university policies by the Ministry of Education, which came into being due to the efforts of UM student activists. The formation of CEC has conferred UM students the power to organise campus elections on its own, signifying the first step towards restoring student autonomy.

The CEC plays an important role in reflecting student autonomy as well as campus democracy. Unlike the campus elections which were controlled by the university management and various political parties prior to 2018, the elections organised by the CEC possess a neutral and transparent mechanism. This ensures that the new tenure of UMSU is elected through the free will of the students collectively without any external influence.

Two years have passed since the establishment of the CEC. Alarmingly, the autonomy in organising campus elections which was fought by UM students for decades has been maliciously encroached. Due to the unreasonable bureaucracy of UM Management, CEC suddenly abruptly cancelled the nomination day on the day itself at midnight of 27 June. When CEC marked 10 July as the new nomination day, UM Management again forcibly requested CEC to delay its plans on the ground that ‘online election will violate COVID-19 SOPs’.

According to information derived from internal sources, ever since the governance of Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition, the Minister of Higher Education, Dato Noraini Ahmad has instructed every college and university, either public or private, to adjust the date of campus election from the second semester to the first semester of each academic year. However, this policy has also been implemented since during the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition era of governance. Such policy was strongly objected to by student activists as the university and political forces will make use of the student orientation programme to influence the new students who have yet to familiarise themselves with the university, guiding them to cast their votes for candidates who are pro-university or candidates who are affiliated with certain political parties.

Apart from that, there has also been news that the decision of the Lembaga Pengarah University (LPU) to force the CEC to delay the campus election twice consecutively was also induced by political forces. Besides, according to UMSU, Pusat Teknologi Maklumat Universiti Malaya (PTM) who is responsible for handling the online electoral system had allegedly lied to the CEC that the system will only be ready in November, which is during the first semester of the next academic year.

UMANY hereby condemns the university management’s intentional acts of interfering with CEC’s works as well as the act of maliciously forcing CEC to delay the campus election. These acts invalidate the rights to student autonomy and campus democracy of the CEC and every UM student. One could not help but wonder if there were any hidden political motives that had driven the university management to act in such a way?

Since the present issue concerns the campus democracy of UM as well as the rights of UM students, UMANY urges all UM students to pay close attention to this issue and we support the CEC to regain power in organising campus elections. Besides, we also call for the collaboration between UMSU and CEC to ensure that the students have the ability to hold campus elections which truly belong to them.


Campus Democracy, Student Autonomy

UMANY

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On 6 May 2021, Palestinian residents protested against the Israeli Supreme Court’s upcoming decision to evict Palestinian residents from Sheikh Jarrah. On the following day, Israeli police attacked Palestinian Muslims who were worshipping at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, thereby injuring approximately 180 Palestinians. 80 of these injured Palestinians were sent to the hospital for treatment and one was in critical condition. [1] Subsequently, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), a Palestinian militant group, fired missiles into Israel, while Israel counterattacked with airstrikes targeted towards refugee camps, media offices, and health infrastructures. Ground troops were also sent to attack the wounded and medical staff. As of 18 May, 213 Palestinians, including 61 children, were reported to have died; on the Israeli side, 10 casualties were reported, two of which were children. [2] The United Nations Security Council held two rounds of emergency closed-door meetings on the 10th and 12th of...
Post a Comment
Read more

UM Pleases the Government Due to Change in Political Climate

UM was previously proud to announce that UM students enjoyed student autonomy and bragged that the organising of the campus elections are completely controlled by its students (CEC). However, it has now become a puppet of the authorities, blindly following policies which were put in place to interfere with campus democracy! Since the change of the Federal Government in 2018, the opportunity for student autonomy to grow arose. For the first time in more than 40 years, the CEC, which is an all-student committee, was established with the full support from UM in order to hold campus elections during the second semester of each academic year. At that time, UM actively supported the reformation and was even willing to clear the obstacles for its students which arose when holding campus elections to show its support and protection for campus democracy. Today, ever since the Ministry of Higher Education under the Perikatan Nasional government started to intervene in matters pertaining to unive...
Post a Comment
Read more